Norton Testifying in Rules Committee After Forcing Changes to Anti-Home Rule NRA Bill (9/15/08)

Norton to Testify in Rules Committee Today After Forcing Changes to Anti-Home Rule NRA Bill

September 15, 2008

Washington, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) will testify this evening before the Rules Committee to argue that her bill, the National Capital Security and Safety Act, co-sponsored with Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and no other bill should be authorized for floor consideration. The Rules hearing will be held in rm. H-313, U.S. Capitol.

The Norton-Waxman bill respects the self-governing power given to the District of Columbia by Congress, while a competing NRA bill will remove gun-legislating authority from the District of Columbia and leave the city without gun regulations or the requirement that guns be registered. Even so, D.C. has continued with the bill it began working on in July, and will announce its permanent legislation at a press conference today, effective as early as tomorrow, with a hearing scheduled on Thursday.

By refusing to give into the NRA attempts to usurp D.C.'s gun legislating authority, Norton was able to get a hearing that exposed dangers in the NRA bill. She has predicted that even the NRA will need to revise the most reckless provision of its bill allowing the carrying in the streets of military-style weapons by adults and children. However, the bill will likely still contain provisions, "that no rational legislator would allow to survive in post-9/11 America, particularly in the nation's capital," Norton said. Among the most serious would be leaving the city with a bare law with no regulations, and without power to do registrations that allow the police to track guns used in the commission of a crime, the ability to buy a gun at a gun show without registration or background check, and the right to own a gun immediately after release from a mental institution, among others.